Social media and internet intermediaries must take responsibility for the content hosted on their platforms to make them safer for children, women, and other online users, Union Electronics, Information Technology and Information and Broadcasting Minister
Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Thursday.
“Platforms must wake up and understand the importance of reinforcing trust in the institutions that human society has created over thousands of years,” Vaishnaw said at the Digital New Publishers Association (DNPA) Conclave 2026.
Social media platforms that do not adopt adequate safety measures to protect users from harmful content will be held liable, he said.
“Non-adherence to these principles will definitely make them responsible because the nature of the internet has changed now, and synthetic content should not be generated without the consent of the person whose face, voice or personality has been used to create it,” Vaishnaw said.
The time has come to make a major inflectional change, he added, asking platforms to cooperate with the changes society needs.
During the AI Impact Summit earlier this month, Vaishnaw told reporters that the government was in talks with social media platforms and internet intermediaries to impose a complete age-based ban on children below a certain age from using social media.
“This is something that has now been accepted by many countries that age-based regulation has to be there. It was part of our DPDP (Digital Personal Data Protection) Act when we created age-based differentiation in the content accessible to young people,” he had said.
Apart from a ban on children below a certain age using social media platforms, the government is also in discussions with intermediaries on the best possible solutions to contain deepfakes, he had said.
The call for a ban on children below a certain age using social media has gained ground after Australia became one of the first countries to implement it nationwide. In India, Andhra Pradesh’s IT Minister Nara Lokesh also hinted at the possibility of implementing such a rule in the state, following which other states said they could consider a similar move.
To make platforms more accountable for hosted content, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology earlier this month amended the Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code, 2021, reducing the response time for social media platforms and internet intermediaries to take down objectionable and unlawful content from 36 hours to three hours. The new rules came into effect on February 20.
On Thursday, Vaishnaw also said social media and internet intermediaries must share revenue with content creators in a fair manner so that conventional media, large and small influencers, professors, researchers and news channels, including those in far-flung areas, benefit proportionately.
“Everywhere, the principle now has to be set right, and there has to be a fair share of revenue with the people who are creating the content,” he said.
 "Social media platforms must take responsibility for content: Vaishnaw")
